Overview of Program

Testimonial by Dr Peter Levine founder of SOMATIC EXPERIENCING and author of 'Trauma and Memory: Brain and body in a search for the living past' and 'Waking the Tiger: Healing trauma'

"Over the years, I have had the opportunity to teach with Susan and to learn from her. She is a bright star and a clear author; she is able to distill complex theories and research into readily understandable concepts."

Click on the picture of Susan below to watch a short video about her training.

In this workshop Susan Hart will bridge the latest decades of brain research with attachment theory and developmental psychology, focusing on a core insight in personality formation – that the brain interacts with the environment through experiences of being attuned with important others. The key to understanding and healing such diverse problems as stress, posttraumatic disorder and even disorganized attachment is that they are responses to massive misattunement processes.

Healthy personality development occurs in an interpersonal system that is co-regulated through attuned and synchronized now-moments of interaction. This is the hallmark of the healthy parent-child dyad as well as the healthy psychotherapy relationship, where psychotherapists bear the primary responsibility for creating co-regulated synchrony with the client through the quality of their presence as well as their intentional methods and interventions.

Through videoclips and experiential exercises Susan Hart will give a brief summary of child development from the autonomic (sensory and arousal) level, to the limbic (emotional) level, to the neocortical (mentalization) level of interaction. Organized in the neuroaffective compass model, these three experiential levels offer a framework for insight into:

• healthy emotional development,

• the nature of dissociation,

• assessing the clients level of personality competence and proximal zone of development, and

• selecting the best interventions to help and support traumatized children, families and adults out of traumatic and disregulated states.

Learning Objectives

Attendees will be able to:

Identify the Neuroaffective triangle: Theory – Method – Self-agency

Apply knowledge of the impact of trauma and insecure attachment in arrested personality development in treatment of children, adults and families.

Discover resources and imbalances on the different hierarchical levels of the brain.

Structure therapy according to the neuroaffective compass model of personality development. Connecting bottom-up and top-down strategies - from sensorimotor interaction to mentalization, and back.

Navigate a therapy session with the inquiry “What works for whom?”

Program Outline

Day 1

The relationship between windows of opportunity and the proximal zone of development

Nature – nurture

Temperament

Self-regulatory capacity

Establishing macro- and micro regulation

Structure, limits rules and rituals

Resonance and mirror neurons

The hierarchical brain

Quantum leaps of development and Paul McLean’s model of the triune brain: